Behavioural Alterations in Domestication Process: Comparative Studies Between Wild, Captive and Inbred Red-Crowned Cranes (Grus japonensis)

Abstract

The Red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis) is one of the largest birds in East Asia which is among the rarest and endangered cranes in the world. In order to enhance population management and further conservation of Red-crowned cranes, researchers compared behavioural changes from wild population to captive population. Meanwhile, researchers also compared the artificial inbred population with the natural normal populations. In this research, five main behavioural patterns of Red-crowned cranes include resting, moving, preening, feeding and alerting were identified by all occurrence sampling and instantaneous scanning sampling methods with 5-10 min intervals. The referred wild and captive populations were concluded from the previous publications and the artificial inbred populations were observed in Hangzhou Wildlife Park (China) during August and September, 2009. As a result, researchers found the difference (p>0.05) between wild and captive populations is not significant. However, preening in captive population is higher than in wild population. The wild population spent more time for resting compared to captive population yet feeding is the most time-spent behaviours for both populations. Furthermore, behavioural patterns between normal and inbred populations are found significantly different (p<0.05). Alerting and resting behaviours are significantly higher in the normal population than in inbred population. Moreover, moving is the dominant behaviour of inbred population but feeding is taken the most time by normal population.